


The Angel and the Architect:

by TheLightdancer



Series: The Phoenix Multiverse [7]
Category: Warhammer 40.000
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-26
Updated: 2020-11-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:35:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27728872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLightdancer/pseuds/TheLightdancer
Summary: It is the 31st Millennium, in the height of the Great Crusade. Perturabo, the dour Primarch of the Iron Warriors, is given a task that uniquely for his Legion places him together with his angelic brother Sanguinius.Unknown to Perturabo, shifts have occurred in higher echelons, and a Legion accustomed to bitter and savage wars away from the eyes of the Imperium begins to be drawn closer to its edge. As destiny's wheel begins to turn down a path none expected, Perturabo and his Legion begin a path to discovering the price of getting what you most wanted is getting exactly that.
Relationships: No Romantic Relationship(s), Perturabo & Trident
Series: The Phoenix Multiverse [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1430596
Kudos: 9





	1. Prologue, Ork Empire of Over-Boss Ursharaka

_The bridge of the Red Tear:_

"You are certain of this, brother?" The words of the Angel retained a beauty that none of his brothers could match. They matched their speaker in all truth, as he alone among his brothers was not merely a caged star or thunderstorm but as if an angel had been called from heaven, given armor and the finest artifice of the Imperium, and set to war against the terrors of the lords of the outer darkness. 

If he was this, the figure that spoke to him in armor cracked by overwhelming brute force and not yet fully repaired was a wounded wolf, face still healing the damage. Beforehand, Dorn had been among the most praised and welcomed of the Emperor's sons. Now.....now there were new shadows. The Emperor's displeasure with the XVII Legion and its wayward primarch, their brother who aspired to be a preacher but was made a general was known. If it did not come to a purge it would be because of as united a conclave among the sons of the Emperor as it could get. To have the hitherto unflappable lord of the VII Legion emerge with eyes that glowed green in a terrible madness worthy of Curze, and dealing wounds to match their murderous and deranged brother's talons and then to see the indomitable Wolf King still marked by the impact of the damage was...disconcerting.

As disconcerting was a pall that had come on their brother Curze, and the things that alone among their brothers bar perhaps the distant Khan, he suspected. Curze was not wounded by despair, he was wounded by hope.

These things whirled in the mind of the Blood Angel as he listened to the Wolf King's murmured Fenrisian oaths and curses directed at the person of their brother, and then the growling distaste on his part that inflected his words thickly.

"It is our Father's will, not mine. If it is not to be Dorn, he told me, then it is to be the Hammer of Olympia."

Sanguinius could not resist his eyes widening slightly at that news.

"Then how may I change things one way or another, brother?"

The Wolf King's guttural rasp was the bark of a wounded and enraged dog with its fur bristling.

"Of all of us but.....the Crimson King" and the rasp changed to a wolf's snarls as a fire died, eyes illuminated by the embers and thirsting for blood, "you see things more keenly. It is no secret to us. Our father would have sent me, but..."

And he moved his damaged armor to illustrate the point.

"My wounds need time to heal, and my armor must be repaired. So it is something that he entrusts to you."

Then there was a voice and a being that spoke and made Russ kneel.

The Angel too knelt, the vision of a being of golden splendor changing the Hololith to a point that it seemed the Emperor himself stood in the room before His son.

"Your brother speaks the truth. There are greater designs that are but beginning to take shape. I shall need a Praetorian in time to come. There are but two choices, and the lord of Inwit has.......unveiled secrets that he shall surpass or sink into. If it is not to be him it is to be my Lord of Iron. I asked your brother to speak to you first to show you the starkness of the choices you face. That we all face. In the past it has been the Lion or the Wolf who seek out the hidden places, or those of the Serpent Beneath.

Here, my son, a task to give you a new challenge that as with all others you shall rise to face."

There was no emotion on the Emperor's face, yet the emotions that extended out were powerful enough that Sanguinius could not stifle a small gasp of awe at the reminder of his father's power.

"The Lord of Iron faces an Ork Empire due north of the Ghoul Stars. It is my will and my task that you seek your brother and appraise him for me as a Praetorian. I have not yet made my decision, but what shall be found here shall play its part."

Sanguinius remained kneeling.

"I know that you do not have your oath papers, my son, but in my presence you do not need them in front of you. Draw the oath after."

From the scabbard at his side his father drew his blade and even dulled with its fires silent, Sanguinius felt the power of that blade on his pauldron.

"Do you, Sanguinius swear to your role in this? To determine the future of the Imperium and of Terra against all nature of foes within the Legions and without them? Do you pledge to sift forth the hearts of men, as a guide the most fair and wise of all my sons? Do you pledge to resist the brute force of the foe no matter what animal cunning it throws at you, that the right may prevail?"

Sanguinius nodded.

"On this matter and by your blade, I swear, Father."

The Emperor seemed to nod, imperceptibly, then stepped back and sheathed the blade.

And then the hololith cut out. Sanguinius raised himself to his knees. He was not far from the Lord of Iron's impending war, as events stood. He had but recently finished a campaign, and the restocking after, and his sons and he were awaiting a new task. And now they had one. Sanguinius's mood was sour, and more than slightly so.

At the best of times, Perturabo was a difficult companion and a brother only Magnus truly loved. A worthy general and master of logistics, but at anything else in life....

Sanguinius huffed. "I'd rather be serving with Curze," he growled. He was committed, he had sworn the oath. As he gave the orders to his Legion and to his fleet, he kept telling himself this, over and over.

\--------

_The Iron Blood, Strategium:_

Seldom did Triarch Harkor see his father at a loss, but he did here. 

Perturabo, the hulking mountainous figure clad in his great armor, the Logos, stood with blank confusion in his face.

"Sanguinius is coming here?" The confusion in his voice was.....strange. Usually a being of mercurial mood on a good day, his sons would have been more prepared to see their father raging at his Legion being slighted, being required to wage vicious and terrible wars in the shadowy elements of the Imperium, still moreso at the favor shown to the Imperial Fists who did so many of the same things and in the biased views of the Iron Warriors did them less well against weaker foes and reaped greater plaudits. 

Now here the Lord of Iron and his Legion were poised to wage war on a vast and sprawling Ork empire, a successor splinter to the Empire of Overlord Mashogg. They had spent time on the fringes of the Imperium's wars and knew little of the secret counsels and councils at its heart. In truth they had begun to take a perverse pride in it that would have stored up the misery in the wake of another few decades of such ignominy for a terrible and wrenching fall.

Now, he was told by an order from no less a figure than Malcador the Sigilite, via Psyker means, a concept that already had Perturabo uneasy, to await the arrival of Sanguinius and the first major deployment of another Legion into the kind of warfare that up to this point he and his Legion had waged alone and friendless.

Silence stretched and for a time Perturabo seemed strangely still, more of a massive mechanical statue that aside from blinking and other small tells of life could have been one of the hidden works of art in some of the smaller Iron Warriors ships with the sons truest to their father's true spirit though unaware of this and how much it was so.

The silence ended when the Lord of Iron clicked his teeth, "I wish that it was Magnus, he alone among my brothers has that true connection to me and I to him, my son."

Harkor remained quiet, his mind whirling with potential intrigues. Perturabo's gaze became searching and he blanched slightly, with a small pall of fear that his father might have read his thoughts, somehow.

Perturabo shrugged within his hulking armor.

"I do not trust this, my son, but it might lead to no longer having to take the metal to the stone. We will wait, and if the Orks insist on leaving their hellscape of a world we will make ruins of their ships."

Silence fell again and then the Lord of Iron spoke three words in a blunt and curt argot of Lochos:

"Summon the Trident." 

Harkor blink-clicked a vox channel on his armor and knew that Berossus and Forrix would be on their way soon enough.

His father went back to silence and looking at various of his plans for wonders that had never been made (and in his own hearts, quietly, Harkor found himself wondering given these wonders lay beneath the brutish and cruel persona of his father if such things were beneath all of them, or if their father was the only Iron Warrior who was an architect and not a butcher who was proud to be one). Harkor's thoughts turned to what he remembered of the Blood Angel and the last (and up to that point: only) time the Blood Angels and the Iron Warriors had served together in the Crusade.

Then they had faced a civilization where strange AIs in multi-faceted bodies that could seemingly switch from body to body had fought a long and bitter war in one of the oddest Forge World or Forge World-adjacent societies encountered. The Angels were refined outwardly, and yet the memories of that savagery he'd seen had him surprisingly reflective. Perhaps it would not be as worrisome as his father believed it. Remembering the ease with which Nassir Amit had given into a frenzy and torn apart one of the abominable intelligences with his bare hands, he reflected further. Then again, perhaps it would be. 


	2. When Baal and Olympus meet:

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The IV and IX Legions meet at the gates of the Ork Empire, and war plans are drawn.

_The Iron Blood, Strategium:_

The Iron Warriors fleet moved around the Ork world, registering positions in preparation to begin the greater war. All that had occurred were a set of brief exchanges of fire where both lesser ships and the _iron Blood_ itself unleashed such roiling maelstroms of power as to obliterate the smaller Ork craft, for a very loose sense of that word, that sought to challenge them. It was a task different than taking the metal to the stone, if not entirely one that most Astartes would see as glorious. To the Iron Warriors that it meant war by mathematics in space instead of at the business end of a spade was all that truly mattered, and made a greater difference to them and for them. The occasional rumblings of the ship as its firepower echoed were the only sounds that could intrude here, where the three Warsmiths known as the Trident had assembled before their lord and the Master of Olympia. 

They knelt as one, Harkor slightly behind Forrix and Berossus and not entirely ill-disposed at this. If their lord should show the sour edge of his temper better Forrix than him and better Berossus than Forrix. Perturabo's blue eyes bored into them with the searching gaze of a mind wrought in eldritch science and magick alike (though this latter would not become known until much, much later, when the Galaxy burned and the stark secrets of the old days were unveiled). Twenty sons had been forged in the old days. Two had fallen, and this was a factor kept in mind by the sons of stoic mountainous Olympia. The Emperor too was an unforgiving father who decimated his sons to prove a point.

The Lord of Iron's gaze remained searching and the silence stretched, until he willed himself to speak:

"My sons," he said quietly. "I suspect that there must have been some great failure somewhere, again. Already the Emperor has mooted the potential to purge another of my brothers. The Lords of the II and XI Legion failed, and it is said that the turn of Lorgar and his legion of God-botherers is the next potential target. I suspect, for now, that whatever draws Sanguinius here may be connected to this." He gestured for them to rise and they did, though they could not look him in the eye for long any more than any other Legion could look their own Primarchs thus.

"I do not know which way Sanguinius leads but my inclination is to purge the errant sons of Colchis on general principles. Lorgar's Legion worships our father, and does so against his will and against his direct order. The Emperor has repeatedly warned them against it, and if it does not cease I suspect that the point of his being spared would see another, still greater message. Perhaps Monarchia," he mused. "A perfect city, my brother calls it." Something ugly flashed in his face then, a sneer crossing it. "Lorgar does love to boast so about his temples to a false god. God-Emperor of Mankind indeed. We shall rue the day that humanity topples the last stone on the last priest in the last temple only to find that my father has replaced them all."

The Warsmiths said nothing, leaving their father to his unusually vocal musing.

"I suspect Sanguinius comes here to seek not so much my counsel as to sway me to the choice of siding with the factions against Lorgar. Magnus opposes it, but then my brother is....he is capable of loving those who do not make it easy." The Lord of Iron's face moved in a slight, cruel grin. "Russ, I know, speaks against it, and so does Alpharius. Fulgrim, Ferrus, they are for it. The Lion, my older brother, remains silent but such is his way. I do not know what the Khan thinks and why would I? The savage doesn't believe his brothers should know his counsel. In the Lion it is the wisdom to let others speak and to take interpretations of their actions and make them writ in stone and metal. In the Khan it is a simpleton obsessed with speed like the monsters we are to hunt, enthralled to his caste of witches."

He sighed. "The Angel will be leaving the Warp soon enough. Be wary, my sons, and if his sons should seek to draw you into counsel emulate the wisdom of my brother of the forests. Speak little, much less than I have here, and learn much."

Harkor, and of course it was Harkor, was the one of the Trident who dared ask: "Father, if our counsel is silence, why spend so many words to tell us this?"

He flinched when the Lord of Iron's guns on his fists briefly cycled and then cycled back. "Because, my sons, I need my Legion unified now more than ever. I can trust you with this counsel, more than any of my sons. We must know what is truly at stake here."

The answer given, was accepted.

Then orders were given to prepare the formal pageantry to hail a son of the Emperor even as the ship rumbled with the sounds of weaponry echoing outward and the destruction of more of the small Ork craft.

_Two weeks later:_

It began with the distorted false light of the Warp erupting into fell colors that seemed to drink in darkness without truly dispelling it, a kaleidoscopic pattern that revealed a vast fleet. At Signus Sanguinius would bring his full Legion with him, here his Expeditionary fleet commanded around a quarter of its size, twenty-five thousand Blood Angels. The _Red Tear_ was at the vanguard, and it was one of the few ships of the Legion with greater than equal chances against the _Phalanx,_ of which only _The Iron Blood_ and _The Vengeful Spirit_ could boast. It was the sigil of the IX Legion writ large, in a vast region of space, and its manifestation was met with a caution and suspiciousness that reflected the innate soul of the IV Legion hardened by long and savage wars fought against merciless foes with little to show for it but bitterness and wrath. 

Chimes echoed, the sounds of a hail, and Perturabo turned to one of his sons on the bridge, telling him: "Open the channel, Barabas."

Barabas Dantioch, one of the sons of the IV Legion who was at this point new in the ranks of the Warsmiths, was also one of his father's favored. Already this had produced jealousy and ill-will among other Warsmiths but where the will of the Decimator willed things none wished to find themselves volunteered for another 'correction' of Legion failures. The channel was opened and a figure of wondrous splendor clad in artificier armor stood before them.

Each of the sons of the Emperor was wrought in a duality, a being of such splendor and charisma that other beings were bowed beneath their very being, able to stamp themselves on a room such that they could seem to swell and become monstrous in scale without truly changing height at all. It was this sort of Primarch that the Lord of Oympia, like his Medusan counterpart, represented. A clenched fist in iron, a snarl of power and warlike dominance and assertion of the might and majesty of the Imperium.

Against this was a figure of numinous nature who seemed to mirror all of their Father, moreso in crucial ways than Horus. As with the sons of the III Legion so were the IX fond of elaborate works of art and adornment of their weaponry, and with a figure like Sanguinius whose bloody teardrops marked on his armor stood out and complemented the gold at other levels, it was little wonder that this was so.

The Archangel of Baal had a gaze no less searching than Perturabo's, though his sons wondered sometimes that where their father was cold and stern and unforgiving on good days of which he had few, the Archangel seemed to look at them with a kindness and compassion superior to anything Olympia had produced, let alone the colossus in iron with chevrons of gold and jet and the skull on his own breastplate who nodded to his brother.

"Brother Sanguinius." Two words, in Perturabo's tectonic rasp that could not conceal the fullness of the acid and bitterness worming their way into his Legion.

"Brother Perturabo." A voice no less deep than Perturabo's, but flavored in a power amplified by elements of the Warp and Psyker nature that were of a kind to Magnus, if not in the same kind of direction.

The Archangel continued: "I would like to greet you, my brother, and to offer the service of myself and a quarter of my Legion to this war."

Where in the talks with his Trident there were awkward silences, here the Lord of Iron responded and spoke swiftly, and decisively, making a gesture with his left hand and speaking:

"You are welcome, Brother."

\--------

_Perturabo's sanctum, Iron Blood:_

Sanguinius could not resist a more than slight bemusement at the set of marvels in Perturabo's inner sanctum, the designs that were worked and worked in wonder, things that remained as yet concepts on paper that had yet to be, if ever would they be. Too, there were works of art and birdcages where various captive avians chirped and provided a dissonant trace of life in an otherwise cold and stoic ship befitting a bitter and soured Legion. If the hulking giant that stood before him, as his sons Raldoron and Azkaellon took the measure and the merit of the Trident in turn, took a bit or more than a bit of satisfaction at the sight of the impact of his concepts on so praised a creator and a father of creators as the Archangel of Baal, the Lord of the Blood Angels elected to ignore this, believing the Lord of Iron had the right. 

"These are wondrous, brother," he spoke as he paused by a vast amphitheater, a work to rival or to match anything of the ancient Romanii or Hellenii from whom the peoples of OIympia took their descent.

Perturabo seemed puzzled for a moment and then pleased, a brief genuine smile crossing his face before iron fists clamped down on it with a strength worthy of Ferrus.

"Your Legionaries would be welcome, my brother."

With that the two Primarchs moved to a hololith chamber which called up a visual of the Ork sphere.

"This particular splinter of Overlord Mashogg's Empire offers a fairly standard pattern for Orks, insofar as there is such a thing. A moon transformed by some inexplicable Xenos actions into a battle-station." He snorted, the contempt visible on his face. "It had a smaller fleet but it has destroyed almost all of them in confrontations with my fleet. So there is one less task to worry about."

Imagery closed in more broadly on a great hulking mountain shaped in the image of the heathen xenos gods of the Orks, two great faces in a permanent open howl.

"Here, at what is either a citadel, a fane, or both, the commander of these creatures has made his fortress. Were I our brother the Lupercal I would prepare a great speartip and seek to smash the head and then watch the body destroy itself."

Another image popped up, along with a few others. "But I am not Horus, who gains glory at the expense of other Legions. If I were, I would find myself in a deeper problem."

Sanguinius chose to overlook the sneering comments at a brother he was closer to than most. Perturabo and Corax thought the least of Horus and he could not deny that in their situation he would be more willing to share it. He looked more closely at the locations noted.

"Psykers," he breathed in surprise. Perturabo's nod could not disguise a desire on his part to seek battle anew and to finish what he began. "Yes. It was this force that did so much to hold up my brothers the Khan and the Wolf King. These Greenskins display a higher than normal Psyker contingent, and have a trait that I have not encountered in any other context where they are concerned."

It was then that the distribution was laid near the fanes to the Greenskin gods and Sanguinius breathed in further surprise. "It appears as if this set of xenos Psykers rules them."

Perturabo nodded. "In this sense brother, I truly am glad that you are here and I welcome your presence. You and the Khan and Magnus have shown great results with the Librarius."

Sanguinius nodded, more cautiously. "And you oppose it."

Perturabo nodded again. "I do. Our father warns against delving too deeply into the Warp and it is not you or Jaghatai who direct the Librarius, but Magnus himself. You understand restraint. The Chogorian savage also understands it. Magnus? He would bargain the souls of his sons for a scrap of rare occult work, and consider it a worthy trade. I love my brother and I respect his wisdom more than any, where it comes to knowledge on most things. With the Warp? I'd rather face a planet of felids with the Wolves of Fenris at my side."

Sanguinius could not resist a snort of laughter at that.

"I do not hold to the Librarius, nor do I consider it wisdom that it exists, but only a fool spurns a weapon of such potency where it can do good. To destroy these monsters, we must destroy the caste that sustains them. And these citadels around the citadel are the focus of their power."

Perturabo then began to lay out a plan that reflected both the nature of his particular way of waging war and was clearly meant, in this case, to see how and in what ways the Angel would modify it. Most often the Angel had worked with Horus Lupercal, whose way of war was showy and indomitable and worked like an avalanche or a tsunami, an inexorable power barreling all in its path through itself with a vicious means of waging war and conquest. The Iron Warriors, by contrast, had worked out an elaborate plan that sought to exploit both known Ork weaknesses and the brutish mathematical approach the Legion was known for.

And yet, listening to the plan, It was clear that for all that Perturabo despised Horus that his Legion had more than a few traits in common, for both would have designed a similar finishing stroke, the culmination of the Iron Warriors kill zones converging in a massive encirclement. Where they differed was a plan for orbital fire support followed by a strike against foes who would be disoriented by that firepower. Too, the Iron Warriors plan incorporated far greater use of artillery, and yet....

"Your plan seems a bit light on the idea of infantry, brother."

Perturabo nodded. "That is the kind of war my Legion has tended to fight. Dug deep in the mud wielding firepower and fire plans, grinding our enemies down. With the help of your Legionaries we have a chance to change that. I would not tell you how to deploy your troops, but...." and with that Perturabo unveiled a second plan that surprised Sanguinius.

"We could link up this way, yes." He mused.

"But why are my Librarians not expected to be integrated into the offensive?" 

A second set of runes lit and Sanguinius nodded in understanding. "This is the plan that worked for Jaghatai, isn't it?"

Perturabo nodded. "The Khan did expose a weakness, and one that could circumvent the broader process. Your sons and mine serve as draws to lure in the Orks to charge and storm their lines, where we give them all the fight that their barbaric creed demands. And your sons wield their power in turn to overload their Psyker field, to destroy them, and then with the ensuing Chaos, Iron and Blood shall storm the citadel and we shall slay the monster that leads these beasts. Together."

Sanguinius looked to the Lord of Iron more perusingly.

"A good plan, brother. I do not see a need to modify it. I do not mean offense here, but given your reputation, I am surprised to see a plan meant to preserve the lives of my sons and my Psyker sons in particular."

The Lord of Iron smiled coldly. "My mathematical approach to war is seen as callous, brother Sanguinius. I can assure you it is not. An army that takes too many casualties is no army at all. My way of war is bereft of romantic gestures like those welcomed by so many of my brothers, but war is an unromantic thing. War is cruelty and you cannot refine it, its glory is wasted and wasteful. Those who unleash it deserve all cruelty and malediction to be weighed against them, and they might as well appeal against a thunderstorm as against the havocs of war."

The Blood Angel raised an eyebrow. "Willyum Sherman, of Old Earth."

The Lord of Iron smiled with a crooked grin. "He put it well, brother. Since war is such a terrible thing, I seek what limited beauty there is in waging in fire plans, and in mathematical equations to which my sons are the architects of that beauty. I am denied the chance to build what I wish to build in peace, so I build with my sons in War. And one cannot build without appreciation of detail, nor concern for the finer points. I grieve for my sons no less than you for yours."

"If this plan works, we shall begin the landings as soon as you are ready. My sons first, then yours, then the Psykers last. It will be war as it must be fought, unrelenting absolute destruction and then ending in fire and fury."

The Angel nodded. "It will."

As he prepared to leave, the Lord of Iron spoke with a somewhat more booming voice than otherwise: "Tell me, did you expect me to be so petty as to spend your sons' lives to get glory for mine as Horus does to our Legions?"

Sanguinius froze, and then sighed.

"I wish you would not speak of the Lupercal so. If any of us is to be father's heir it would be him."

Perturabo snorted. "Horus has father's favor because he was first, not because he has ever been a particularly great general. Anyone with his logistical favor and with the ability to wield other Legions to do the bloody work would look a genius of war. Seldom do his speartips break the enemy as decisively as they should because he puts all his weight into a single gesture to break a planet. We wage war for a galaxy, Sanguinius. It is a sterile place without melodrama. War waged to target a single man must fail because war is war. Logistics and mathematics."

The hololith shown on the vast hulking iron armor, mirrored to a degree in those brilliant blue eyes.

"Horus might sacrifice other Legionaries but I am not our brother the hero. We have seldom worked together, Sanguinius, and I am aware that I do not have the easiest reputation to work with of any of our kin. But I will no more waste the lives of your sons than I do my own. You can count on that."

Sanguinius nodded.

"I do, brother."

With that he stepped out and plans were made, orders given, Oaths of Moment taken. The Lord of Iron would accompany his sons in the first wave, a gesture unusual for him and one his sons in the Trident deemed prompted by the Angel and the knowledge that the Angel in turn would accompany his sons of the second wave. It would be a hard fight, for fighting against Orks was never a simple matter, but it would be a welcome one as well.

The oaths were given, and one by one embarkation decks began to unleash a rain of drop pods, falling from the sky like meteors.

On the Ork world the forces of the Over-Boss looked up and roared in their bestial speech, raising weapons and vowing to give the 'umies a good krumpin' in the name of Gork and Mork.

As stones lit in hellish fire the drop pods of the IV Legion descended, behind them heavier transports that would bring the weight of firepower, both artillery and the coffin ships of the Mechanicum. The hellish drop saw the first of the Legionaries striding forward, bolters and volkites and other weaponry firing, and a single drop pod larger than the rest that landed near the region where the command center would rise during this first phase of the war. From its door emerged the Lord of Iron, who looked with eyes hardened by hard wars, and as one Ork sought to attack him simply snorted and raised his right fist, bolters echoing with a boom to match that of the hammer of the old Nordyc thunder gods, and in a rain of fire and blood the first kill of the war gladdened Perturabo's heart.

Part of him felt a sense of grief that it was so, that it took things like this, directing his sons in a long and bloody war against the vicious animalistic xenos with their fungal miasma to feel peace. That part was easily buried in the time it took the next Ork to lunge for him and for him to simply move with vicious speed and strike it such that it erupted in a shower of gore, roaring his triumph as he did so, feeling a small shade of what his brother Angron must feel.


	3. War, Wars, and Rumors of War:

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The War for the Empire of Overlord Ursharaka begins.

CITADEL, EMPIRE OF URSHARAKA:

Ursharaka, Over-Boss of an empire that was the last trace of Overlord Mashogg, remained on a great throne. There were plenty of 'umies 'ere for krumpin' and he knew that. The big one in iron had come here, the one that had broken the Overlord and cast him down after a great duel. There was an art to this, and his Weirdboyz had promised him great things. Even now he could see his armies surging to face the Iron Boyz in their trenches, and see the slaughter. He grinned, flexing the immense suit of armor he'd built as a tribute to the Iron Boyz' warlord, dat Pertrabuo or whatever da 'umies called 'im.

The Iron Boyz' waged war in a brutish sense, firepower and trenches, slow and inexorable. It was not like the ones in white, the Moon-Wolves, but it was no less destructive. A fight worth having, and plenty of willingly stupid Boyz to go charging and soften them up.

When the see-er that he looked into showed a sudden set of explosions in the skies, as his Boyz were drawn into the great conflict, his gauntlet tightened on the great blade in his scabbard. There was not one 'Umie divine lord here, there were two.

THE SKIES OVER URSHARAKA:

As the Iron Warriors had drawn out the first waves, so was the plan set in motion for the second and implemented. Sons of Olympia waged brutal fights in trenches, the Orks surging and roaring, delighted in the brawl that awaited them. When the skies split the Orks behind the others stared in blank confusion. Sonic booms and falling pods, a second rain of fire and smoke to match the first.

IRON WARRIORS BASTION:

Even as others of his sons fought in the trenches, there were others who dug and built, as the Lord of Iron's visions showed him. His armor was able to match the strength of the blows of the Orks facing him, his wrist-mounted bolters destroying what the overwhelming impact of his fists did not destroy. It was not yet time for him to draw the blade that he had as his second weapon. A fine weapon, that. A personal gift from Horus Lupercal (Perturabo roared with especial anger at the thought of the smug older brother in question and with his gauntlets smashed in the face of an Ork before unleashing a wave of bolts that tore through their lines in a ripple of devastating fire, for a moment producing almost a bow-shock in the ever-flowing tide of Orks). Not yet time. He saw the drop pods, and his smile was cold and unkind.

The Angel had waited until his sons were drawn into this fight, eight long hours in a world that knew neither day nor night in any truthful sense. Eight hours of ferocious fight and the massing of corpses, and the beautiful mathematics at his disposal and the growing pile of Ork corpses periodically decimated by Iron Warriors battle-brothers with flamers who burned the corpses to maintain visibility. Behind growing breastworks of dead Orks the Iron Warriors' cruel splendor was working exactly as intended. The Orks were not infinite, and even on his own his Legion would have crushed them given time.

Bait a trap suited to the psychology of these fungal beasts, turn them into the architects of their own destruction. Against their Psykers he would have wielded other weapons, and deadlier ones, and if necessary spent the precise number of lives and casualties of his sons to destroy them. Now, as the skies rained fire and smoke and iron, he smiled coldly. It had been a very long time since the last time his Legion had served with the sons of Baal, bu there were no finer fighters. Were one's goal simple butchery the XII Legion was superior, for they were savages in more than the sense he viewed the Riders of the Khan.

The Khan's people were primitive, but they had a rugged primitive wisdom. He got on least well with the Khan of anyone bar Dorn and Ferrus, for they were different in profound ways. The Khan was a warlord, a swordsman who had great skills. He suspected (and that it would anger Fulgrim to tell him so only made it more pleasant a thought) that there were no finer masters of the Blade among the Legions. His warriors laughed and were free riders, but they were slapdash and sloppy with fundamental traits of warfare. Logistics, the heart of war was an afterthought to a being who like all his brethren was made to be a general.

To deem them primitives and savages suited it. Masters of great power and careless with what they had in terms of real war, but beyond equals in the discipline of the Warp save one. And it was this force that descended in fire. The red-armored Angels, equal or superior to Fulgrim and his Legion of peacocks in beauty, but far superior as fighters.

Refined without and savage within, a mirror of the sons of Fenris.

Their pods fell and one of them erupted outward after a single errant Ork artillery strike struck it, and others burst open as if it were a signal (and for all the Lord of Iron knew, it was one). From it descended a being in golden armor with great wings, in whose hand there was a great sword, and whose shriek was that of the Aether made manifest.

From the sky an angel descended as if the Old Gods of Old Earth, Adonai and Allah and the Threefold King, had called forth a spirit of wrath.

From the sky the Angel swooped in and then he landed and with two strokes of his blade as Perturabo saw approvingly, two Ork heads severed.

He raised his own fists and shouted:

"The Angels have come, my sons! Now advance to my brother's side! No Greenskins can stand against the sons of the Master of Mankind!"

Within his thoughts he remembered the dreadful strengths of the Psykers of the Overlord and how they had done just that, against two of the most savage and destructive warlords. The Khan's fine swords and Russ's uncontrolled violence were not enough.

This was but a splinter and yet an annoyingly high percentage of the Psykers remained. Thus far they had not risen from their lairs, and that made the Lord of Iron inwardly awaiting to see what would happen if they did start to do so, even as the tsunami of his sons began to move.

The Stor-Bezhakh were unleashing drumfire bombardments, tearing open great swathes of Orks, and the other sons of Olympia rose, blades and hammers and power fists and power claws at their disposal.

"Move from column to line of battle!"

The maneuvers followed as the dense columns of the Iron Warriors that had poured fire from bolters and combi-bolters boosted by the Stor-Bezakh formed lines, seemingly at one level thin and yet at another, this was the optimal element to wield the firerpower that was his Legion's stock in trade.

The tsunami drew back and began to unleash itself with not the roaring pleasure of other Legions in a great chorus (though individuals at points yielded to the maelstroms within. Harkor's Grand Battalion in particular displayed this) but on the whole a stoic silence, one that reflected the other aspect of their father's face. They did not need to roar or give speeches on the glories of humanity. Their roars were the thunderclaps of artillery and the booming power of Titan Legions. The stuttering snarls of tanks and self-propelled assault guns, the lightning-slices of their Bolters.

As his sons moved with him in the vanguard, Perturabo's order echoed to his sons across the Legion wide vox protocols.

"Kill them all!"

BLOOD ANGELS LINE:

His sons had landed in a set of landings interspersed across the battlefield. Not a cohesive, coherent line as with the Iron Warriors, for where Perturabo's Legion had displayed an awe-inspiring and breathtaking precision that left him wondering what else the IV Legion's services hid. There were four clusters. Sanguinius himself led the first, his sons Raldoron and Azkaellon the second and the third. And Nassir Amit, the other great captain of the Legion who was with his Primarch in this deployment the fourth. The Flesh Tearer had all but erupted out of his drop pod, slamming his fists against his chest and roaring in a mocking salute to the Orks, who reacted accordingly by hurling their vast quantities of inaccurate firepower around. 

The Battle-brothers of the IX Legion retaliated with a blend of firepower and in the case of the Flesh Tearer's column by plunging into melee. Gauntlets, hammers, blades, and ferocity. The Orks surged toward them and yet they met their matches and their superiors, for the Flesh Tearer was honed fury, not raw animalistic barbarism. Against this Raldoron's Legion was precision, artistry. The bolter and the blade reaping their bloody harvests, and the first to seek to link up to the line anchored by Sanguinius, whose Sanguinary guard in this case fought away from their captain.

There was no loss of cohesion here when Azkaellon in turn was fighting to maintain his lines, knowing the Legion collectively would have to push to link up to the Flesh Tearer to their left. Not when the person who led them in this case was their Primarch, whose blend of fury and precision meant that his blows struck with the devastating force that his more brutal brothers could wield and with the kind of deft swordwork to match the Khan or Fulgrim.

Thunder and power echoed, the sounds of the Iron Warriors' artillery. Sanguinius's artillery and armor would be arriving with the Psykers as a part of the second wave, when the Legions marched on the xenos Psykers and their spheres. It was less of a loss than might be expected with the ferocity and sheer weight of the Iron Warriors' equipment ripping great lines of fire and shock. He could hear the impact and felt it as the Iron Warriors began a march toward his own lines, his brother of Olympus in the vanguard, his Trident by his side, and his bodyguard detachments, the Tyrantithikos behind them.

The sons of Olympia were held to be simpler figures, dour beings that sat behind walls and opened fire in the most destructive fashions but otherwise more akin to the Imperial Army than true Astartes. The forces that Sanguinius could see marching with the drumfire of the Stor-Bezhakh ensuring they marched behind walls of fire did not match this. Their ferocity paled next to the kind of unconstrained brutality unleashed by the Flesh Tearer and his fighters, to whom Ork armor was nothing, and to whom their flesh existed to tear and rend, but then so did anything short of the vileness of Angron's Legion of skulltakers.

Sanguinius smiled in the midst of moving beneath the swing of a large brutish Ork-bull and then hurling his blade through its chest and its chestplate, impaling it with a roar of ferocity behind his helmet and then whirling to throw the corpse clean through the ranks of several of those following it.

In blood there was life, and in the shedding of blood he felt the twin fell shadows that reached for his Legion. One red and in its own sense making its manifestation most visible in Amit, in the ease with which his Legion fought the gigantic fungal beasts that had only thought they knew brutality.

He was a whirling maelstrom of ruin, a thunderstorm caged in the body of a man.

Angels of Blood dealt death in mountains of slain, and Warriors of Iron stormed through a tsunami.

In between them great monsters of flesh and machine roared and howled, having a great old time, for this was the way of the WAAGGHHH and soon the Weirdboyz would have their Weirdboyz ways ready and then the 'umies would REALLY howl. For now there was the delight of War, of the simple joys of life in a galaxy where there was no peace among the stars, only an eternity of slaughter and carnage, and the laughter of thirsting Gods!


End file.
